Abstract
Alfred Hitchcock is a well-known Hollywood suspense art director. Spellbound, Psycho, Rope, and Strangers on a Train are his masterpieces. These four films are all centered on the theme of crime, showing the morbid characters vividly, exposing the dark side of the characters’ long-held depression, and attacking the complex evil of human nature. Based on Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, this thesis intends to make an analysis of the morbid characters in the four films from four aspects: psychological structure, personality structure, psychological defense mechanism and living and death instincts. When the ego and the id are out of balance, morbid mood will easily occur. At the same time, dreams also play an important role in Hitchcock’s movies, which hide the motivation of characters’ crimes. In addition, the psychological defense mechanism and the instincts of living and death also secretly promote the development of characters. This thesis will help readers understand the connotation of Hitchcock’s films through the interpretation of morbid characters in movies.
References
Adelman, G. (1987). Heart of Darkness: Search for the Unconscious. Boston: Twayne.
De Berg, H. (2003). Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Camden House.
Freud, S. (1962). The Ego and the Id. New York: Norton.
Freud, S. (2005). The unconscious. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Hai Ni. (2002). On Freud’s Theory of Personality and its Contribution. Theory Monthly. 10, 23-24.doi:10.14180/j.cnki. 1004-0544.2002.10.011.
Hitchcock, A. (1960). Psycho. Film.
Hitchcock, A. (1948). Rope. Film.
Hitchcock, A. (1945). Spellbound. Film.
Hitchcock, A. (1951). Strangers on a Train. Film.
Jingyi Xu. (2018). A study of the image of the schizophrenic characters in the film. Master’s thesis. Hebei University, Baoding.
Limin An. (2008). Freud in Hitchcock's films. Master’s thesis. Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai.
Mengjiao Li. (2015). A Research of suspensses of Hitchcock’s films from the perspective of psychoanalysis. Master’s thesis. Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou.
Qiang Ning. (2018). Kierkegaard’s Three Spiritual Lives and Freudian Instinct Theory. Contemporary Education Research and Teaching Practice, 7, 164-165. doi:10.16534/j.cnki.cn1 3-9000/g.2018.1099.
Rothman, W. (2012). Hitchcock: the murderous gaze. New York: State University of New York Press.
Xinhuan Bai. (2004). The Philosophical Interpretation of Freud’s Theory of the Unconscious. Doctoral thesis. Fudan University, Shanghai.
Yang Lu. (1998). Psychoanalytic literature. Jinan: Shandong Education Press.
How to cite this paper
Morbid Characters: An Interpretation of Hitchcock Film Characters with Freudian Theory
How to cite this paper: Danhui Chen. (2023) Morbid Characters: An Interpretation of Hitchcock Film Characters with Freudian Theory. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 7(1), 13-19.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.01.002